Greater Love

by Robert Whitlow

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t apologize for sharing God’s compassion for Jessie and letting it come out. That’s why you were appointed by Judge Cannon to represent her. It wasn’t Sister Dabney’s will. It was God’s will.”

  I put my hand on my heart. “And something tells me I’m not off the case, even if Jessie doesn’t show up in court and I never see her again.”

  “All I know is that I was supposed to get us started praying.”

  I looked at Zach with renewed respect. “I’ve never prayed like that with a man who wasn’t a member of my family or church.”

  “That’s what you and I should have been doing from the beginning. We’ve spent most of our energy trying to figure out if we’re compatible when we should have focused on finding ways to cooperate together in helping others.”

  “Like the time in Mr. Callahan’s kitchen,” I said, remembering the miraculous way the Lord touched the older lawyer. “Even though I didn’t do much but watch.”

  Zach shook his head. “No, you arranged the meeting and supported what happened with your faith. But I didn’t see that as something you and I could build on. Then, God used you and Vince to reach out to Mrs. Fairmont when she had her stroke last summer.”

  “Did that make you jealous?”

  “Yes, and mad at myself for feeling that way, which shut me down.”

  Zach was revealing layers of himself I’d not seen.

  “When you called last night, I decided not to hold back,” he continued. “I hugged you when I saw you were safe, then offered to spend the night to make sure you could rest. This morning when you mentioned Jessie, it wasn’t the time to give advice or tell you what to do. I needed to pray with you about the burden of your heart. If I want something more for us, it’s time for me to enter your world and share it with you.”

  The tears welling up in my eyes could not be denied. Two drops rolled down my cheeks. Zach saw but didn’t stop.

  “Love isn’t just figuring out how to get along,” he said. “That’s important, but it’s not the goal. I want a love that shares the unselfish passions God puts on our hearts then helps us do everything we can to make them happen. Wouldn’t that be an awesome foundation for a relationship?”

  I nodded.

  “Would you like to have that with me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? What about your feelings for Vince?”

  It was time for my answer, and, in that moment, I knew without a doubt what it should be.

  “Vince is like a brother; you’re more than that.”

  “How much more? A guy needs a little encouragement.”

  “A lot.” I leaned forward. “And I’ve been wrong not to give it. What you said about sharing our God-given passions is exactly what I’ve always wanted with a man but couldn’t put into words. If that piece is in the right place, I believe everything else can follow as it should.”

  “Like romance?”

  “Yes.”

  Zach grinned. “With long motorcycle rides with you behind me on the bike, not crammed into a sidecar.”

  It was my turn to smile. “It will take us awhile to get to that point.”

  “I can wait.”

  The ache of longing in my heart I’d felt for Zach in the past returned with such force that it almost took my breath away. He eyed me curiously.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. And if you knew what I feel in my heart for you right now, you’d be greatly encouraged.”

  Zach’s smile broadened. “A man can travel a long road with words like that ringing in his ears. I’ve missed you terribly.”

  “Me, too,” I managed.

  He stretched out his left hand across the table. I took it. When our fingers met, the intensity of the bond between us felt like a betrothal.

  “Father, bless the road we’re on,” he prayed, this time with his eyes closed. “May we travel it together. And with you.”

  I closed my eyes and let Zach’s words become part of me. We sat in silence for a few moments. He squeezed my hand and released it. I pulled mine back, but part of it remained with him.

  “Can I come over early in the morning and spend time like this with you?” he asked.

  “Yes, if Mrs. Fairmont doesn’t mind, which she won’t.”

  “And drink the great coffee you make?”

  “I might try to acquire a taste for it myself. My parents drink coffee together every morning.”

  Zach raised his cup. “To the future.”

  ZACH LEFT, AND I WENT DOWNSTAIRS TO GET READY FOR WORK. I wasn’t sure if my feet touched the floor or not. So much had happened in my heart while we sat on the veranda that my mind was having trouble catching up.

  When I checked my hair in the rearview mirror as I neared the office, I noticed a silly grin on my face that didn’t want to go away. Two police cars were in the parking lot. An officer in uniform and another man in a white shirt and tie were standing beside the front door. Surprised that the police were following up so quickly on the attempted break-in, I parked beside one of the police vehicles.

  Then, when I got out, I could see the glass in the upper half of the front door had been shattered. The man in the shirt and tie turned around as I walked up.

  21

  “I’M TAMI TAYLOR, ONE OF THE ATTORNEYS.”

  “Al Houghton. I’m an investigator with the police department,” the man replied.

  There were brown stains on the investigator’s shirt. I remembered Maggie’s comment that Houghton liked to chew tobacco.

  “I read the report prepared by the officers who responded to your 911 call,” Houghton continued. “It looks like whoever wanted to break in while you were here came back later to finish the job.”

  On his second attempt the thief didn’t attempt to finesse his way into the building. Instead, he destroyed the glass and reached inside to unlock the dead bolt.

  “Have you called Maggie Smith?” I asked.

  “She’s on her way,” Houghton said. “One of the other tenants in the building saw the glass and called our office.”

  “Have you been inside?”

  “Just a quick walk-through to make sure no one was in there. We didn’t see any obvious damage except to the door, but we’d like to go through the offices carefully once Maggie gets here.”

  I shuddered at the thought that someone could have been lurking in the office when one of us arrived. Maggie sped into the parking lot and quickly joined us.

  “Sorry about last night,” she said to me. “I didn’t get your message until late. I know that was scary, and I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Ready to do an inspection?” Houghton asked her.

  I followed Maggie and the two officers into the building. A couple of files in Shannon’s area had been knocked to the floor. Her computer wasn’t disturbed. Maggie’s office appeared untouched.

  My space across the hall had been ransacked, every drawer emptied, all the files dumped onto the floor, the contents in a heap.

  “Your computer is gone,” Maggie said as we surveyed the damage.

  Sure enough, my new laptop, along with its power cord, wasn’t there.

  “Did you back up your files yesterday?” Maggie asked.

  I reached in my purse and took out my flash drive.

  “Yes, it’s all on here.”

  “The other office is clean,” the uniformed officer said from the doorway.

  Maggie turned to the inspector. “What do you make of it, Al?”

  Houghton shrugged. “He went to a lot of trouble for a laptop. What was it worth?”

  “About two thousand dollars,” Maggie replied.

  “Are you going to check for fingerprints?” I asked.

  “Only if this is a TV show,” Houghton replied dryly. “The front door will have hundreds of prints jumbled together.”

  “What about in here?” I persisted. “Only a few people have been i
n my office.”

  Houghton moved some of the papers on the floor with his shoe and picked up a latex glove.

  “People who wear these don’t leave fingerprints. Your thief was polite enough to let me know that I don’t need to send out a fingerprint crew. The extra glove shows us he knew what he was doing.”

  “That may be one of the gloves he was wearing,” I said. “It’s one of the few things I saw when I scared him off.”

  Houghton looked at Maggie. “Do you want me to dust the room for fingerprints?”

  Maggie turned to me. “Al’s right. They probably won’t find anything, and the crew will have wasted time that could be better spent on a more serious case.”

  “Sort through the mess and try to determine if anything else is missing. I’m sure you’ll want to install a security system.”

  “I was going to call Rick Fain’s company,” Maggie replied.

  “Good choice.” Houghton nodded. “If you can locate the serial number for the computer, send it to me so I can include it in my report and notify the local pawnshops.”

  “Will do,” Maggie said. “Thanks for coming. And I appreciate you not spitting on my carpet.”

  Houghton patted his empty left cheek and smiled. “You know I don’t get started until after ten thirty in the morning.”

  Shannon, her eyes wide, was entering the office as Houghton and the uniformed officer walked out. I left Maggie to bring her up to date and returned to my office. Thirty minutes later I was sitting on the floor surrounded by papers when Julie walked in.

  “Tammy Lynn Taylor, I leave town for a few days and you can’t keep your room clean!” she exclaimed.

  I jumped up from the floor and gave her a big hug.

  “How’s your father?”

  “Talking to his broker on the phone the last time I saw him and discussing long-term investment goals. Once I heard that, I knew I could leave town. Then, when Maggie called and told me what happened, I knew I had to get back here to hold your hand.” Julie gestured to the mess. “I thought you scared him off.”

  “I screamed. He ran away. But not very far.”

  “Anything missing besides the laptop?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “Was access to your computer password-protected?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your password?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s confidential.”

  Julie chuckled. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your razor-sharp wit.”

  “The reminder clue was ‘favorite city.’”

  “San Francisco?”

  “No, Powell Station.”

  “Powell Station isn’t a city.”

  “It is if you live on Beaver Ruin Road.” I picked up some papers that belonged in Jessie’s file and looked for the folder. “Is that Jessie Whitewater’s folder?” I asked, pointing to a red expandable folder at Julie’s feet.

  “Yeah,” she said, bending over to pick it up and hand it to me.

  I put the papers in the folder.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Much better than I deserve,” I answered, thinking again about my morning with Zach.

  Julie gave me a strange look. I kept rummaging through the papers.

  It took a couple of hours to restore everything to its proper place. Nothing was broken, and I couldn’t find anything else amiss. Except for the empty space where my computer should have been, the office looked the same. Shannon walked in with a box in her arm and put it on my desk.

  “Here’s your replacement laptop,” she said. “It’s the same model.”

  I’d not expected a new one so soon but realized there was no reason not to immediately replace it. Without a laptop, a lawyer in the twenty-first century was worse off than an eighteenth-century lawyer without a quill pen. By noon, my office was the same as before. The phone buzzed. It was Shannon.

  “Line two. It’s your preacher friend.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Yeah, then asked for you.”

  Before I could ask what Shannon meant, she put the call through.

  “I’ve found something you should see,” Sister Dabney said. “It belonged to Jessie.”

  “What is it?”

  “Some papers, but I can’t read them.”

  “Are they illegible?”

  “No. One’s in a foreign language and the other doesn’t make sense. When can you come?”

  I checked my calendar. I had a meeting with Maggie and one of her clients in an hour and a half.

  “Right now.”

  “I’ll meet you at the church.”

  I passed Shannon’s office on the way out. She stopped me as I reached the reception area.

  “Do you have a Bible in your office?” she asked.

  “Yes, the thief didn’t steal it, although I wish he had. Reading it would be good for him.”

  “May I borrow it? The Dabney woman told me something I want to check out for myself.”

  I stepped closer to the waist-high opening between the reception room and Shannon’s work area.

  “What verses did she give you?”

  Shannon looked down at a slip of paper but kept it hidden. “I just want to check it out.”

  “The Bible is in the upper right-hand drawer of my desk. If you have any questions about what you read, let me know. I’ll help if I can.”

  “This is all so new to me,” Shannon said.

  WHEN I ENTERED THE SANCTUARY, SISTER DABNEY WAS SITTING in the purple chair on the platform. She called out to me.

  “Come up here.”

  I walked down the aisle and onto the platform that contained the rocker and rickety podium Sister Dabney used to hold her Bible. She pushed herself out of the rocker.

  “Sit down,” she commanded.

  I sat in the rocker, glad we were alone.

  “We’re not alone,” she said in quick response to my thoughts.

  “Who’s here?” I asked, quickly looking around but seeing no one.

  Sister Dabney pointed up. “He is.”

  She handed me a hymnbook.

  “Turn to page 456,” she said.

  I turned to the page.

  “That’s where I found them,” she said. “Is there anything about the songs on those two pages that contains a message?”

  Page 456 was an old-time song we occasionally sang at my home church; the song on the opposite page was unfamiliar to me. There wasn’t anything in the title of either song that grabbed me.

  “No, ma’am.”

  Sister Dabney grunted. “This paper was in the back of the book.”

  She handed me a ragged sheet of paper that had been folded so many times the crease lines had become part of the paper. Opening it, I saw rows of columns containing letters and numbers. None of the letters formed recognizable words. The numbers were random sequences of ten numbers. There were geometric scribbles in green ink along one edge and an ornate flower drawn in several colors of ink on the back. The numbers and letters were written in pencil.

  “How do you know this belonged to Jessie?” I asked.

  “That’s the hymnbook she used when she came to the church.” Sister Dabney pointed to a spot at the end of the second row. “I came in here to pray for her early this morning, and the Lord directed me to pray from the place where she sat. Sometimes I sing as I pray, and when I opened the hymnbook, I found that sheet of paper. Once, when she should have been listening to the preaching, I saw her writing on a sheet of paper with a green pen I’d let her borrow.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “But what would Jessie be doing with a sheet of paper like this? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s why you’re here. To interpret it.” Sister Dabney took the hymnbook from me and opened it to another place. “After I found that piece, I looked through the rest of the book and found this.”

  Still nestled in the fold of the hymnbook was another sheet of paper. I took it and opened it
.

  “It’s some kind of certificate, perhaps for stocks or bonds,” I said, then pointed to the printed words. “This is German, but I can’t read it.”

  Sister Dabney turned around and slowly descended the steps.

  “I’ll be at the house. Come by before you leave and let me know what they mean.”

  “Wait, can I take these to the office and ask Maggie and Julie to help?”

  Sister Dabney stopped at the bottom of the steps. “That’s what a threefold cord is all about. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  RETURNING TO THE OFFICE, I QUICKLY BROUGHT MAGGIE AND Julie into the conference room.

  “What’s going on?” Julie asked. “Do you know how many phone calls I have to return before I leave this afternoon?”

  “I need your help,” I replied, laying the pieces of paper on the table. “Sister Dabney found these in a hymnbook at the church. She believes they belong to Jessie. I think this one is written in German.”

  “I took German in high school,” Julie replied. “With a name like Feldman it came easily for me; must have been from a repressed gene.”

  “Can you read this?” I asked, shoving the certificate toward her.

  Julie picked it up. I watched her eyes widen.

  “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s a bond. And if Mrs. Heidelberg did her job teaching me, it’s for one hundred thousand euros.”

  “What company?”